Jill and I were discussing Lending Club tax reporting last weekend, and we thought it would be a helpful discussion for everyone, since many of you have taken advantage of Lending Club sign up bonuses.

Is Lending Club taxable? How do you report interest earned on Lending Club loans on your taxes? What do you do if you don’t get a Lending Club tax statement?

Is Lending Club taxable?

Yes. How’s that for a direct answer? Just like income you receive from a savings account or other investment, your net earnings from Lending Club loans are taxable. So do yourself a favor and report it.

To get started, you’ll need three sets of statements for your Lending Club tax reporting: your year end statements, your monthly statements and your tax statements. You can find all three in your Lending Club account under the statements tab.

How do you report interest earned on Lending Club loans on your taxes?

Lending Club will produce various 1099s for you based on your investments. The most common is the 1099-OID (which stands for original issue discount). Here’s how to report it:

1099-OID: If Lending Club sent you a 1099-OID, you’ll report it on Schedule B, Line 1. The 1099-OID for newer Lending Club loans replaces the 1099-INT they sent for loans a few years ago. More specific instructions for how to report OID tax forms are in publication 1212 on page 6, under how to report.

Reconcile your 1099-OID with your year end statement.

If there are differences (which I’m going to bet there will be), add any net earnings not reported on the 1099-OID to your taxes (see below for how to calculate the amount).

What do you do if you don’t get a Lending Club tax statement?

Chances are, if you are investing only $25 in each loan, you’re not going to get a 1099-OID.

Lending Club will only produce a 1099 for you when an individual loan has interest above $10. So, even if you have dozens of loans that together were greater than $10, you’re still not going to get a tax statement.

So that means many of you who are diversifying across lots of loans, as the social lending model is built on, are going to be in this situation.

Here’s how to handle it, since the Lending Club earnings are still taxable, even if you don’t get a tax statement.

The loan interest and late fees are displayed on your year end statement.

Unfortunately the servicing fees aren’t, so you have to look back through your account to add those up. They are displayed on your detailed monthly statements. Hopefully, Lending Club will fix that in the future, because I have to be honest, that’s a pain point.

If you are adding your self calculated net earnings to the amount on your 1099-OID, be sure you don’t double count any of your loans by mistake.

Lending Club Charge Offs

Another tricky Lending Club tax topic? The charge off.

I had a charge off awhile back which was even stickier when it comes to taxes. Based on all of the regulations I’ve read, there could be a few different ways to report your charge off.

By the way, because I know some of you are going to ask…. I handled the charge off by reporting it as a personal bad debt and showing the net loss as a capital loss on Schedule D.

Lending Club Taxes

When it comes to taxes, Lending Club investments do take a bit of work; it’s something we need to add to our Lending Club Review.

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Comments to How Do You Handle Lending Club Taxes?

Thank you for the advice. It is helpful. I am a little confused about how to report the charge-offs. On my Year-End Statement there are three summary items. (1) Loan Interest (2)Late Fees (3) Losses from charge offs. So my question is since Lending Club already provided to me a number for Losses from Charge Offs what would be the reason to report it separately on the Schedule D? Also, since I did not receive any Tax Statement from Lending Club where do I report the income?

De minimis OID. You can treat the discount as zero if it is less than one-fourth of 1% (.0025) of the stated redemption price at maturity multi- plied by the number of full years from the date of original issue to maturity. This small discount is known as “de minimis” OID.

Example 1. You bought a 10-year bond with a stated redemption price at maturity of $1,000, issued at $980 with OID of $20. One-fourth of 1% of $1,000 (stated redemption price) times 10 (the number of full years from the date of original issue to maturity) equals $25. Because the $20 discount is less than $25, the OID is treated as zero. (If you hold the bond at maturity, you will recognize $20 ($1,000 − $980) of capital gain.)

Example 2. The facts are the same as in Example 1, except that the bond was issued at $950. The OID is $50. Because the $50 discount is more than the $25 figured in Example 1, you must include the OID in income as it accrues over the term of the bond.

I’m no tax expert, but I think this means that if your note is paid off early, and you didn’t make much interest on it, then I think you can exclude that interest from your taxable earnings. But, I don’t know what you would use for the value of the note at maturity.

Also, in this same document, there is this statement: “The OID accrual rules generally do not apply to short-term obligations (those with a fixed maturity date of 1 year or less from date of issue).”

So, does that mean that you don’t have to report interest on notes that are paid back in less than a year? I have no idea. These documents are difficult to understand.

I still don’t get how to handle the write-offs on Sch D. Every entry on that form seems to point to “From form 8949” or whatever. I am concerned about reporting this on the wrong line, and nothing on Sch. D is obvious to me.

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